British India Steam Navigation Company Ltd.

Richard Douglas Crow

MODASA.


Built: 1921 by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd., Newcastle.
Tonnage: 8,986 g, 5,566 nt, 11,045 dwt.
Engines: Twin screw, 2 x two stage Metrovick turbines by builder, 4,000 BHP, 13.6 knots on trials.
Passengers: 103/67 1st Class, 45/81 2nd Class, numbers varied as to passenger berth requirements.
Launched 24th December 1920, completed 9th December 1922, Yard No. 1104.

Modasa is a town in Gujerat, north of Bombay.

Modasa spent most of her pre war years on the London Calcutta service but occasionally spent some time on BI's service to East Africa. During the Price of Wales visit to East Africa he was transported along with his retinue from Beira to Mombasa aboard Modasa. When on passage in 1935 she sustained minor damage when in collision with steam yacht Latharna that required a stopover in Malta to facilitate repairs in 1935. What follows is an account illustrated with photographs by one of Modasa's officers.

SS MODASA. STORM DAMAGE. 1937.

When homeward bound from Calcutta to the UK in 1937 the Modasa, Captain J.W. Gilchrist, Chief Officer Ernest Ashby, encountered a violent storm in the Bay of Biscay. Modasa hove to for some three days and she was reported as being overdue in a B.B.C. bulletin.


Bow on into storm.


Hove To

Much superficial damage was sustained with the bridge deck and forward ladders to the promenade and boat decks being carried away, as were the derricks at number two hatch and the starboard side bulwarks by way of number two hold.


Damage during storm, shipside rails.


Ship's side damage.

The most serious damage was, however, structural, caused when the vessel was almost overwhelmed by a huge wave that fell on the foredeck in the early hours of the middle watch. The whole of the foredeck by way of number two being set down by eighteen inches. This is quite noticeable in the photographs taken afterwards on deck and was even more apparent down in the tween deck where the hold ladders and stanchions had been concertinaed and distorted.

Some heavyish lifts, from memory items of earth moving equipment, loaded at Marseilles onto the hatch square of No. 2 tween deck had moved, splintering the wooden hatch boards and distorted the hatch beams. Fortunately they had not fallen through into the lower hold but had lodged between the beams.


Derrick damage, beneath the Bridge.


Damage to fore deck in way of Nos. 2 and 3 holds


Into a trough.


S'board side F'ward.


S'board side

In consequence the ship had to be docked in Smith's dry dock, Middlesbrough for extensive repairs that took some three weeks to complete. The attached photographs taken during and after the storm and subsequently at Smith's Dock show the extent of the damage and the repairs that had to be undertaken.


Repairs underway, Smith's Dock

On completion of the repairs, in order to make up the lost time so as to meet her scheduled sailing date from Calcutta on the next homeward voyage, which was fully booked due to the forthcoming coronation of King George V1, she sailed direct to Calcutta in ballast.


Richard Crow. Fourth Officer in No. 10s.

She was requisitioned for the Liner Division in June of 1940 and was utilised as a Military Store Ship for the first four months of 1941. Those onboard believed that they had been attacked by a U-Boat, when in the Bay of Bengal, in December of 1942, the event was later questioned. After completing her repatriation duties she returned to service on the London-East Africa route in 1947 and it was when on this service that she suffered minor fire damage when at Kilindini in 1952. Sold for breaking on the 24th of January 1954 to Hughes Bolckow Shipbreaking Co. Ltd., of Blyth.

S.S. SHINFU, formerly RAJAH of SARAWAK.

In 1944 I was for some four months Chief Officer of the S.S. SHINFU and my discharge book has the following entry.

Shinfu. 114780. Singapore. GT1451.83 NT892.03. 1stMate 7/01/44 to 18/05/44 Trincomalee.



Built: 1901 as the RAJAH of SARAWAK for the Sarawak and Singapore S.S. Co. by Ramage & Ferguson Ltd., Leith, Yard No. 178.

Requisitioned in 1917 as an Expeditionary Force transport. Owners renamed Sarawak Steamship Co. Ltd., Kuching in 1919. Sold to G.L. Shaw of Singapore in 1932 and renamed the SHINFU. Served in the Liner Division with British India Steam Navigation Co. Ltd., as managers from the 25th November 1940 until 5th November 1942.

Ownership to J.C. Cobbett, Singapore, as executor of G.L. SHAW.

Served as a mobile coal hulk until 21st June 1946. She was laid up in 1946 and scrapped in 1950 at Bombay. I believe she was initially the flagship of the Rajah of Sarawak's fleet.

The SHINFU was a small single screw flush-decked iron built vessel with no double bottom tanks. Two holds, one fore and one aft each served by a single derrick. The main engine was steam reciprocating and the steering engine, sited amidships, controlled the rudder quadrant by a system of rods and chains on each side of the after deck (a similar system to that of the old cadetship AUSTRALIA).


The Warialda Coaling Shinfu, Trincomalee
From an original acrylic by Richard Crow, 2004

The crew were berthed forward, the Officers in a deckhouse aft and the Master in a cabin abaft the bridge amidships. Fully laden she could lift about 1000 tons of coal.

I believe she had escaped to Calcutta before the Japanese had entered the war and was taken over by Mackinnon Mackenzie. They sailed her to Trincomalee with a full cargo of coal where she was then stationed (having by now no sea going certificate of seaworthiness) to provide bunkers for the many small coal burning R N ships based there. When I joined her in 1944 we were working in conjunction with one of the BI W's (possibly the WARIALDA) who would bring a full cargo of coal from Calcutta and while bunkering the RN ships would also fill us up so that, when she left for a further cargo, we could carry on until her return.

As you can imagine, life was pretty basic aboard. In the first place she was alive with cockroaches. My first night I was awoken by them eating my toe nails, thereafter I slept on deck with my mattress on the grating over the rudder quadrant. I simply cannot remember anything about the food or where we ate it, (possibly natures kindly way of avoiding trauma ) except that the galley was amidships on the port side where I had a blitz on the resident cockroaches and disposed of several bucketfuls of them.

The Master was a Norwegian, Captain Thorkildsen, whose previous ship had been lost by enemy action, I was the Chief, and only, deck officer and the Chief and Second Engineer Officers were Chinese. We had an Indian Butler and crew. The ship had a small white terrier dog and the 2/EO a mongoose.


Chief Officer Richard Crow, Tricomalee

Captain Thorkildsen spoke fair English with a strong Norwegian accent ( Kom Chief Mate, let us yump into the yolly boat and go ashore ) He had spent much of his younger life in the Norwegian coastal trade where, I gathered, the locals treated the ships much like buses or trains, jumping on and off at short notice to go visiting or shopping in the next fjord. He told me of one ship where the Captain had a stewardess, unusual at that time, who used to wake him in the morning by slipping her hand under the sheets with a happy cry of "wake up Captain, it's eight bells". One evening a Bishop, making the rounds of his diocese, boarded for the overnight trip to the next port and the Captain said "I'll be on the bridge all night Bishop, you might as well have my cabin, you'll be more comfortable there". The next morning the stewardess, unaware of this arrangement, awoke the occupant of the Captain's bunk in her usual informal way, to the great surprise of both parties.

Captain Thorkildsen was also very impressed by the politeness of Mackinnon Mackenzie's correspondence, look, he would say, I make a mistake and they say, "We regret to note" and sign it "your obedient servant". In Norway the owners would say "you bloody fool, why did you etc". And you were the servant.

The elderly Chinese Chief Engineer was an old China Coast hand and used to tell me anecdotes on life there in the twenties and thirties. He told me that coal, stacked in the open, would always appreciate and I seem to remember he shewed me a formula by which to calculate by how much.

With our small compliment of four officers the ship was only entitled to a ration of two bottles of spirits a month from the Blue funnel line NAAFI ship which was moored in a remote creek so that it took me the best part of a day to sail over and back in our little lug rigged jolly boat to collect our rations of two bottles which the Captain and I shared as the Chinese Engineers were not interested. The last month before I left a new NAAFI ship arrived and moored much nearer to us so I went there instead. The Chief Officer turned out to be an ex BI cadet so after he had given me lunch he took me down and introduced me to the NAAFI Manager who, when I produced my chit for two bottles said "I'm sorry, we are wholesale and can't deal in bottles. I can let you have a case if you like". You can imagine I was very popular with the Captain on my return with the case.

Altogether a very interesting interlude, but four months were about enough and I was quite happy when my relief arrived and I was able to rejoin the real world in my substantive rank of Second Officer.

S.S. Empire Tugela. 27/09/44 – 13/06/45.
A voyage from Madras to Calcutta, the long way round.
By Richard Crow.



I joined the Empire Tugela in Madras as 2/0 at short notice as her 2/0 had been landed to hospital. My introduction to her Master, Captain G. A. Paterson was unusual, reporting my arrival at his cabin door I was greeted with “Ah. Second, good, you are just in time, come in, I have done this side you do the other as I have to go down to meet my wife who is just arriving”. This side was one bulkhead of his cabin which was adorned with framed etchings of Cathedrals and such like buildings, the other bulkhead had framed prints of “Petty” girls ( Petty Girls for those not familiar with the term were colourful drawings by the artist Petty of delightful young ladies scantily clad in very scanty scanties, usually cuddling a telephone in a seductive pose which appeared in the wartime editions of the American glossy magazine Esquire.) Behind each Petty Girl was a print of a Cathedral, it was my job to change them over before Mrs. Paterson arrived.

        
        

As you may have gathered, Captain Paterson, “ Puggle Pat” as he was affectionately known (but not to his face of course) was one of those great eccentrics with which the B.I. in both the Deck and Engine Room Departments seems to have been so richly endowed in days gone by. As usual with such Characters there were many stories about them, one being, in his case, that his eccentricies stemmed from a silver plate in his head that covered a war wound sustained at the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War. Another, probably equally apocryphal, concerned his wife also who was a member of a well known Indian Army family and was quite a character in her own right. When he took her to England for their first long leave together, on arrival in London he said “you don’t want to hang around while I report to Leadenhall St. I’ll put you on the 10 o’clock train to Dover (where they were going to stay with his parents) and then I’ll come down on the afternoon train”. This being agreed they took a taxi to Euston and arriving late, he rushed on to the station crying “which platform is the 10 o’clock going from” “No 3” said the porter,” be quick and you’ll just catch it.” Returning to Euston that afternoon he enquired for the first train to Dover. No trains go to Dover from this station he was told. “Oh but I put my wife on the 10 o’clock this morning” “If you did Sir” replied the porter “she will be Crewe now”. And she was and, it is said, when they were reunited the following day she broke her brolly over his head.

Whatever, he was a most charming gentleman with whom it was a pleasure and privilege to serve.

The Empre Tugela of 6181 tons gross had been built in 1921 for the German Deutsche H G Hansa Line as the s.s. Wartenfels. Scuttled by her crew in 1942 at Diego Suarez, she was salvaged by the Royal Navy and was being managed by the B.I. for the Ministry of War Transport. A good solid comfortable ship, nothing fancy and, of course at that time no such modern aids to navigation as Radar, echo sounders or satellite positioning.. I don’t know about the Engine Room but I expect they were the same, we certainly never seemed to hear any complaints about the engines.

She was a very happy ship, to my shame however, I cannot now ,after some 60 years, remember the names of any of my shipmates except the Chief Officer, Big Bill Bishop. A large quiet man, built like a tank, who was the very epitome of a large plain clothes metropolitan police officer, so much so he told us that once, on home leave in Essex ,he went into a pub one evening and caught the landlord and some cronies indulging in a little illegal betting. Nothing was said but he had free whisky on the house for the rest of the evening.

On passage to Durban, I cannot remember what cargo , if any, we had but we were concerned with the compass errors so took the opportunity of an afternoon watch in the Pemba Channel to swing ship for compass adjustment. Our many course alterations around the compass would have constituted the most complicated zig zag ever devised and must surely have completely outfoxed any lurking U-boat that was around.

On arrival were told that we were booked for a full cargo of coal for Buenos Aires. Captain Paterson, who was a regular “coast wallah” and had probably not been far from the coast in recent memory commented “ it’s all so foreign”. On the way down from Madras the Secunnies had sewn for him, in the finest duck canvas with much fancy stitching, a handsome satchel to take the Ship’s papers when he went to the Naval Control Offices etc. On sailing day from Durban he returned from Naval Control with our routing instructions with a fine new leather brief case. On this being commented on he realised it was not his, investigation shewed it to be the papers of a Clan Line ship. You will have to take it back said the Chief Officer, not me said the Captain, send the Third. So our innocent young 3/0 was despatched by taxi to apologise and explain to an irate Clan Line Master that his Captain had inadvertently picked up this brand new leather brief case in mistake for this equally handsome but duck canvass satchel.

Buenos Aires was something else again. Argentina being neutral there was no blackout, no rationing, full peacetime facilities in fact . There were , however, guards placed at the gangway day and night. It was our impression that if the guards were naval they were much more friendly to us, Army or military guards appeared quite hostile to the Allies. It was rumoured , and I must stress that it was only a rumour, that the army trained mounted police of Buenos Aires would clear the night streets of the city of drunken sailors by literally sweeping them up in a net attached between two mounted horsemen. Our Leading Seaman DEMS Gunlayer went ashore one Sunday afternoon properly dressed, in our eyes, in naval tropical uniform white shirt, shorts, cap and long stockings etc., within twenty minutes he was in jail, charged by the police with being indecently dressed i.e. wearing shorts. On the other hand we received much hospitality and I still remember with pleasure a day out at a country club, lunch and a round of golf all laid on.

Bill Bishop and I went ashore one evening , as we were doing a little window shopping Bill inadvertently bumped into a pedestrian who, as every one did who bumped into him just bounced off. After we had picked him up, dusted him off and apologised it transpired that he was an English ex-pat employed by the Argentine Railways and, learning that we were thinking of food, took us to a quite small and unpretentious steak house which had been in the same family for 70 years and was much favoured by the ex-pats. Simple deal tables , they only served steaks and chips, as far as I remember, but those steaks, they simply melted in your mouth and each chip was as light and flaky as if it had been individually blown up by a bicycle pump. Never before or since have I had the like. After the meal we were taken to a place of entertainment, a sort of cross between a night club and an old fashioned music hall. We must have arrived at about 10.30 or 11 and the place was fairly empty but by midnight it was full, full of families often with children.. Apparently in Buenos Aires it was the custom on returning from the office or work place in the evening to have a few hours of siesta and then sally out for the evening. At this place you sat at tables and watched a series of very good cabaret acts, comedians (the jokes in Spanish were over our heads of course) chorus girls, jugglers and singers etc. As long as you were drinking you were entitled to stay and watch. A very pleasant way to spend the evening. When we finally left in the early hours it was still going like a bomb.

It was here that Capt. Paterson decided that the ship should have a Manx cat and instructed our Agents to get one. After some days they reported that they could not find a Manx cat in Argentine the best they could do was this ginger tom who had lost most of his tail somewhere. His tail was cut off just where it started to bush out so that when he got excited it stuck up behind him like a sweep’s brush, however, he settled in and became a very popular ship’s cat. During our stay I , as 2/0 and Navigator, was kept pretty busy correcting and updating our U K charts from the latest Notices to Mariners which contained many entries about mine fields and other war time restrictions in the U K waters. After discharging the coal and cleaning ship we loaded foodstuffs, canned meats etc. for the U.K. market and then sailed for Walfisch Bay in S.W. Africa where we topped up with some 800 tons of canned fish (I seem to remember a fish called snoek or some such from South Africa being available in wartime Britain perhaps it was this.) After Buenos Aires Walfisch Bay was just a sandy outpost, wharves, factories and little else, but we were only there for a few hours before sailing for Freetown in West Africa to pick up a homeward convoy.


Queen Elizabeth in Trooping colours.

On leaving Freetown in a painfully slow convoy we had only just formed up a few hours out when we met the Liner Queen Elizabeth inward bound with a full compliment of troops aboard. She was a magnificent sight as she steamed, at high speed, through our lines with her troops cheering and catcalling as they went by.

We were lucky, it was an uneventful convoy and there were no causalities. I remember, off the south west approaches watching our Catalina flying boat escort one evening flip her wings in farewell and then head off home. You lucky blighters I thought, in a couple of hours you will be home for supper while we still have five or six days of convoy round the north of Ireland before we arrive in Liverpool.

We docked at Liverpool (Gladstone Dock ?) on a dull and dank winters evening. As one of the very few, if not the only, one onboard with a wife in the U K I was ashore as soon as possible to the nearest telephone kiosk.

During my leave from the coast in 1942/3 I had obtained my Masters Certificate in London. got married in London and then spent the rest of my leave with my wife who was sharing a house with her sister in Tiverton, Devon. Their house was in the same street as the local police station and before returning to sea I had arranged with the local Bobby that if I should ever return unexpectedly I could phone him and he would pass any message to my wife.

I now asked for TRUNKS and when the girl answered asked for a call to Tiverton. “ Sorry” was the reply, a six hour delay to Devon”. Of course I pleaded and cajoled but the telephone operater was adamant, heavy air raids in the midlands and Bristol, lines down etc. Finally, probably in exasperation she asked me who I wanted to call in Tiverton, the Police station!, “ THE POLICE! oh sorry Sir, just a minute “ click click click and I was through. My wife and her sister had gone to the pictures that evening but on their return were met by half the street,” come along they cried, be quick you’ve got to pack and catch the morning train to Liverpool”.

Captain Paterson was going to visit his parents who lived in Dover, he had sent them a telegram saying so but after he had left the ship to go to the station a reply came telling him they had moved house, as I was going to the station to meet my wife I took the reply and found him on the London train, spread all over one side of a 1st. class compartment with 3 R A F Officers huddled on the opposite seat. “Have you got my gloves” was his greeting, apparantly he had left them in the John Lewis department store. With my wife aboard we spent a very pleasant couple of weeks in Liverpool , one day we took a trip up the road to Blackpool as day trippers, we were able to do some shows and on one occasion got involved with an Army Reunion I don’t remember quite how, but it was a successful evening.After Liverpool we moved on to Avonmouth for a few days, where I was able to have some time at home in Tiverton, and then on to Barry for bunkers before sailing in ballast for New York. Certainly a most pleasant interlude for me from what was going to be a longer than usual spell on the Coast.

New York, the first and only time I’ve been there. It did seem to live up to expectations and we were able to see many of the usual attractions. In the Rockefeller Institute I heard my own voice for the first time, played back to me on a recording device. The Empire State Building where the high speed lifts left our stomachs some two or three floors behind, Haydn’s Planetarium where the sky was set as for the night of some great historic event, but I forget which now. Broadway was a disappointment, outside one theatre it looked as though it had been snowing but the pavement (sorry sidewalk) was, in fact, covered with discarded chewing gum . We were having a coffee and doughnut in a café with an American sailor and his girl at the next table and could not help overhearing the following romantic snippet. Sailor… “ Oh Martha, I sure would like to possess you.” Martha… “Oh Wilmer, my hormones are just brushing and combing themselves in anteeeciiipation!.”

The Butler returned from a visit to the local produce market very downcast. Sir he reported I can’t get any french beans, only asparagus. The ubiquitous french bean always, but always, on every BI menu. Is it true that one of the Directors in Mackinnon’s Calcutta owns a french bean farm?

We were berthed somewhere down the Brooklyn Bridge area and loaded a full cargo of military stores etc. for India. A couple of days before completion our cat Tom went AWOL and it was assumed he had been seduced ashore by some American moggie. But not so, Faint cries were heard from No.1 hatch which had been completed and battened down. Looking down a ventilator shaft Tom could be seen in the ‘tween deck . We lowered a bucket with some fish in it hoping he would get in it, but he wouldn’t. Eventually a small and very thin agwallah volunteered to be lowered down the ventilator with a sack to catch Tom. This proved successful and he was brought up on deck. Cats are supposed to be supercillious beasts never shewing emotion, not so Tom. I have never seen a cat so pleased with life. Every one he knew he would rush up to, purring like mad, and make a fuss of. He really shewed his appreciation.

By now the war in Europe was nearly over, in fact we were passing through the Straits of Gibralter east bound on V E Day although we kept up the usual wartime precautions of blackout etc. for the rest of the passage through the Mediterranean just in case there was a rogue U Boat out there who had not got the message.

Our first port in India was Cochin where we expected to be for a couple of days. This allows me to give a final, and in this case a perfectly true story about Capt. Paterson. His wife was living in Bangalore, just up the road so as to speak from Cochin so on arrival he sent her a telegram saying “Come to Cochin” Unfortunately our orders were changed almost immediately and we were to sail the next morning so he sent a second telegram saying “Don’t come”. That afternoon all the port’s tugboats went on indefinite strike and we were strike bound so he sent a third telegram “Come”.The following forenoon the strike was called off and we sailed. I, of course, was on stations aft but the 3/0 told me later that as we pulled off the quay a taxi arrived and Mrs. Paterson got out just in time to shake her fist at her departing husband.

Our next port was Calcutta and on 13th June 1945 we were paid off thus ending what, for me at least, had been a most memorable and enjoyable voyage of some nine months.

It has given me much pleasure to recall these highlights , I only hope that, some sixty years on, they are as accurate as I think they are. In any event I think all of us would regard it as a voyage that any modern travel agent worth his salt would have no hesitation in claiming to be a world cruise worth many thousands of pounds for participating passengers, and I was paid to do it !

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